When it's time for the gloves to come
off,
these attack dogs of L.A. law get the call . . .

[text omitted]

Marty Singer is the all-around bad cop for stars
from Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jim Carrey and Celine Dion.

They're in the Rolodex of every good white-shoe
lawyer in town. Somewhere between the numbers for the Jaguar dealer, Pacific
Dining Car and Two Bunch Palms are the names--and it is a short list--of
attorneys who are called only in certain situations. Because life is sometimes
an easy little 9-iron at Hillcrest--and at other times, it's a David Mamet
play.

When things go bad for a client--and we're talking
off the cliff--the respectable barrister known for his or her brilliant
transactional mind, hail-fellow connections and Ivy League charm may have
to bring in a different type of attorney. One whose job is to dive into
the gutter of a litigious, capitalistic society and win at all costs.
In other words, a specialist: one of the pit bulls of L.A. law.

The ladies and gentlemen on the pages that follow
are just such specialists. But do not think of them as ogres. Or dishonest.
(Nevertheless, they are often called when the opposition lawyer turns
out to be one of the 40,000 attorneys in Los Angeles County who is a dishonest
ogre.) None of them started out as a favorite-son associate at a big firm.
They do not hang out with their clients at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
or Laker games or the Cannes Film Festival. They are instead a function,
and reminder, of something that might go terribly wrong in a client's
life. They have the utmost respect within their profession--albeit respect
laced with a good dollop of fear.

What these lawyers possess is the proven ability
to go all the way, to a jury trial if necessary, and play by whatever
rules are laid down to save their client's freedom or fortune in a civil
or criminal matter. On the other hand, when one of them makes a phone
call or sends a demand letter, arguments are often settled quickly ...
and quietly.

"Marty Singer is a very nice man who loves his family,"
says Priscilla Presley of her own personal pit bull. "But if he thinks
someone has done me harm, he is a stealth rottweiler."

FULL-SERVICE CELEB BILLY CLUB

For years, MARTIN D. "MAD DOG" SINGER of Lavely
& Singer has been the all-around bad cop for stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Sylvester Stallone, Eddie Murphy, Celine Dion,
Roseanne and Jim Carrey. "I'll make one call to a publicist to check out
a tip," growls New York Post Page Six editor Richard Johnson, "and pretty
soon I get a hand-delivered letter from Singer threatening all sorts of
disasters and financial damages."

Singer covers the waterfront when it comes to celebrity
litigation. If a contractor is too slow to finish the star's Malibu pad,
Singer will rip him a new you know what. When basketballer Dennis Rodman
was sued recently for allegedly manhandling a cocktail waitress, Singer
took up the Worm's defense. (The case was dismissed.) When Stallone's
household help in Miami banded together against him in a lawsuit, it was
Singer who caught the case--and quickly spun this to the press: The plaintiffs
were "hired for six days through a temp agency" and one of them "showed
up in high heels to clean the house."

Singer, 48, has impeccable credentials for pit-bull
lawyering. His father died when he was 19, and he had to run the family's
silk-screen printing factory in Manhattan while attending City College
of New York. Graduating from Brooklyn Law School in 1977, his goal was
to move to California and practice tax law. But he quickly discovered
that L.A. transactional lawyers loved a tough litigator who had no desire
to buddy up to clients.

Singer can hold his own in a courtroom--he recently
won jury verdicts for Jean Claude Van Damme in a contract dispute and
Priscilla Presley when she sued a television producer and publicist who
lied about her supposed involvement in a deal they were pitching. But
it is Singer's ability to make prying journalists back off that's made
him so valuable--he charges $... an hour--to folks who are sensitive about
their private lives.

In February, he took on the National Enquirer after
it published a false story that Celine Dion as pregnant. (Singer demanded
a page-one retraction. When the Enquirer refused, he threw down a $20
million invasion-of-privacy suit.) Last January, the Globe apologized
to Singer client Schwarzenegger after publishing a bogus tale about his
so-called defective heart valve. When Willis wanted to stop the Independent
Film Channel last year from showing a documentary critical of him, Singer
got the IFC to quickly abandon the idea, much to the public consternation
of those at the channel unaccustomed to Hollywood-lawyer hardball. And
a big reason the public heard so little about Eddie Murphy being stopped
with a transvestite hooker in his car by West Hollywood sheriffs was that
Singer bulldogged the tabs on the actor's behalf.

Enquirer editor Steve Coz, who shared a dais with
Singer when they debated at Harvard's JFK School of Government, deals
with him on a weekly basis. "Marty is a heavy hitter, but he's reasonable,"
claims Coz in a careful tone. "He's one of the few that 'gets it'--his
clients need the press every bit as much as the press needs his clients."

Don't tell that to journalist John Connolly. An
August 1996 Buzz magazine article dissected Singer's rabid attempts to
discredit Connolly, who had written a damning piece on actor Steven Seagal
for Spy. Singer not only slapped a libel suit on Connolly but also hit
him with a slander suit for allegedly making derogatory statements about
Seagal while reporting the Spy article. (Both suits were quietly withdrawn
a few months after the story ran.)

In his Century City office festooned with photos
of his three children, Singer manages a wan smile when reminded of the
flap. "That story really made me out to be this mean, ruthless lawyer;"
he recalls. "I was surprised how much work I ended up getting from it."

[text omitted]

ROSS JOHNSON
There are lots of lawyers in this town, but where do you turn when things
threaten to turn ugly? Esquire, Premiere and Variety contributor Ross
Johnson scoured L.A.'s legal world to find out ("Raging Bulls," page 102).
"Every lawyer is supposed to be a tough guy," says Johnson, who writes
the Public Eye column for the L.A. Daily Journal. "But these are the guys
you call when you might have to get into the gutter." Johnson found that
having a reputation as a bruiser is not a bad thing. "It's a good moniker
to have," he says. "It's much better to be known as an attack dog than
as an Emily Dickinson."